Flags of the world

This gallery shows 197 national flags: the 193 UN member states, the 2 UN observer states (Vatican City and Palestine), Kosovo and Taiwan. Territories such as Greenland, Puerto Rico or Hong Kong have their own flags too, but they are not sovereign countries, so they are not included here.

Chad and Romania are almost identical vertical blue-yellow-red tricolours; Chad's blue is slightly darker. Indonesia and Monaco are both red over white and differ only in proportions (2:3 vs 4:5). Ireland and Côte d'Ivoire use the same colours in reverse order.

Nepal's flag is made of two stacked pennants, the only national flag that is not rectangular or square. Switzerland and Vatican City have square flags.

Denmark's Dannebrog, a white Nordic cross on red, is generally cited as the oldest national flag in continuous use; tradition dates it to 1219, and records of its use go back to the 14th century.

Red. It appears on roughly three quarters of national flags, followed by white and then blue.

Learn them by continent, and group look-alikes together (the pan-African green-yellow-red flags, the Nordic crosses, the pan-Arab red-white-black-green tricolours). Then test yourself with the flag quiz, which lets you play one continent at a time and type answers for extra difficulty.